How do I upgrade PHP in Mac OS X?

Question

I feel this is an awfully obtuse question to ask, but strangely, this problem is poorly documented.

I would like to upgrade PHP, but there are several problems:

Answer 1

Before I go on, I have the latest version (v5.0.15) of OS X Server (yes, horrible, I know...however, the web server seems to work A-OK). I searched high and low for days trying to update (or at least get Apache to point to) a new version of PHP. My mcrypt did not work, along with other extensions and I installed and reinstalled PHP countless times from http://php-osx.liip.ch/ and other tutorials until I finally noticed a tid-bit of information written in a comment in one of the many different .conf files OS X Server keeps which was that OS X Server loads it's own custom .conf file before it loads the Apache httpd.conf (located at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf). The server file is located:

/Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/httpd_server_app.conf

When you open this file, you have to comment out this line like so:

#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

Then add in the correct path (which should already be installed if you have installed via the http://php-osx.liip.ch/ link):

LoadModule php5_module /usr/local/php5/libphp5.so

After this modification, my PHP finally loaded the correct PHP installation. That being said, if things go wonky, it may be because OS X is made to work off the native installation of PHP at the time of OS X installation. To revert, just undo the change above.

Anyway, hopefully this is helpful for anyone else spending countless hours on this.